Friday, August 17, 2012

Improvement Needed

There are a handful of Columbus Crew players that are racking up substandard club numbers. The list includes big names like Milovan Mirosevic, Chad Marshall, and Tony Tchani. All are under performing when it comes to team results.

Tchani, Marshall and Mirosevic have all started in greater than 50% of the matches this year. Mirosevic, in particular, is only earning 3 points in 21% of his games (3 wins in 14 games started). Team average is 38%.

Mirosevic hasn't started a winning game since May 12th. 3 Draw, 2 Loss since then. The club has had 4 wins in that time.

Out of the three of them, Tony Tchani has shown some individual attacking ability and Chad Marshall has exhibited signs of returning to his impressive defensive form. However, Mirosevic hasn't shown much of anything.

The last metric I'll take a look at is how often players "get a result". Which is to say Win or Draw. Again, these three same players show up at the bottom.

WIN or DRAW %
62% : TEAM
58% : Tchani
57% : Mirosevic
46% : Marshall

The Win or Draw % is possibly the most damning on a Robert Warzycha coached club as he will often pull back early to earn at least a point.

While not exciting or flashy, players like Carlos Mendes, Dilly Duka, Danny O'Rourke, Bernardo Anor and Cole Grossman have done enough to get this club in the playoffs. All of them are averaging over 1.80 points per game (which is good enough for 2nd in MLS).

To me, the Federico Higuaín signing push is more of attempt to make individuals (that have $100k+ salaries) better and not the overall club. Federico will no doubt be a solid player in this league, but he will merely just pull under performing Crew players up to average levels. Thus, leaving the team average.

While Tony Tchani has been moved out of the starting rotation in recent weeks, Chad Marshall serves as the team Captain and Mirosevic serves as a sort of Vice Captain (sometimes Captain when Marshall is out). It does not bode well for the club for these two to be at the bottom of these metrics. Improvement is needed immediately if this team is to move into the playoffs.